In school, Langan could walk into a language test where he had not studied at all,
上學之后,他對語文之類的課程漫不經心,根本就沒有怎么學過,
and if there were two or three minutes before the instructor arrived, he could skim through the textbook and ace the test.
但是他只需要在老師到來之前的兩三分鐘草草瀏覽一遍課本,測試就能拿到高分。
In his early teenage years, while working as a farmhand, he started to read widely in theoretical physics.
少年時期,他成了一個農場工人,他開始廣泛涉獵物理學理論知識。
At sixteen, he made his way through Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's famously abstruse masterpiece Principia Mathematica.
16歲那年,他開始閱讀伯特蘭.羅素的作品以及阿爾弗雷德.諾斯.懷特黑德深奧難憬的《數(shù)學原理》。
He got a perfect score on his SAT, even though he fell asleep at one point during the test.
在美國大學本科標準入學考試(SAT)中,他得到了很高的分數(shù),便在考試的時候,他打了一會兒瞌睡。
"He did math for an hour," his brother Mark says of Langan's summer routine in high school.
“他用一個小時學習數(shù)學,”他的兄弟馬克說到蘭根高中時候的夏季日常安排,
"Then his did French for an hour. Then he studied Russian. Then he would read philosophy. He did that religiously, every day."
“然后,他用一個小時學習法語,接著是俄語。最后他會讀一些哲學方面的書籍。每一天,他都這樣堅持。”
Another of his brothers, Jeff, says,
克里斯的另外一個兄弟杰夫說道:
"You know, when Christopher was fourteen or fifteen, he would draw things just as a joke, and will be like a photograph.
“你知道,當克里斯托弗十四五歲的時候,他畫什么東西都輕而易舉,畫出來就像照片一樣惟妙惟肖。
When he was fifteen, he could match Jimi Hendrix lick for lick on a guitar. Boom. Boom. Boom.
在他15歲的時候,他在吉他上彈出的樂曲,可以和吉米.亨德里克斯的演奏相媲美。
Half the time, Christopher didn't attend school at all.
克里斯托弗有一半時間都不在學校,
He would just show up for tests and there was nothing they could do about it.
他只需要在考試的時候露一下面就行,考試對他來說只是小菜一碟。
To us, it was hilarious.
對我們來說,要是能夠這樣輕松就搞定,那真是該狂歡一番。”
He could brief a semester's worth of textbooks in two days,
他只用兩天時間就能掌握一個學期的內容,
and take care of whatever he had to take care of and then get back to whatever he was doing in the first place."
兼顧他需要兼顧的任何學科,然后又重新做之前他一直在做的事。
On the set of 1 VS. 100, Langan was poised and confident. His voice was deep. His eyes were small and fiercely bright.
在《以一敵百》的節(jié)目中,蘭根表現(xiàn)得泰然自若,信心十足。他說話的語調低沉,一雙小眼暗熠熠發(fā)亮。
He did not circle about topics, searching for the right phrase, or double back to restate a previous sentence.
他說話從不拖泥帶水,已經說過的句子從不再重復,他不假思索就能找到合適的措辭。
For that matter, he did not say um, or ah, or use any form of conversational mitigation:
事實上,他從來不說“嗯”、“啊”這些調節(jié)語速的嘆詞:
His sentences came marching out, one after another, polished and crisp, like soldiers on a parade ground.
他說起話來妙語連珠,一句緊接一句,猶如閱兵式上士兵的步調那樣明快完美。
Every question Saget threw at him, he tossed aside, as if it were triviality.
薩吉特拋向他的每一個問題,他都輕松應對,仿佛這只是小事一樁。
When his winning reached $250,000, he appeared to make a mental calculation
當他獲得的獎金達到250 000美元的時候,他似乎開始衡量是否應該退出挑戰(zhàn),
that the risks of losing everything were at that point greater than the potential benefits of staying in.
現(xiàn)在,如果堅持下去就存在失去所有獎金的風險,這遠高于潛在的收益。
Abruptly, he stopped. "I'll take the cash," he said.
他突然來了個急剎車,“我愿意就此打住”他說道,
He shook Saget's hand firmly and was finished, exiting on top as, we'd like to think, geniuses invariably do.
堅定地搖了搖薩吉特的手,停了下來——我們也許會想,就如很多天才那樣,他總是見好就收。